When I saw this post on The Real Strategy a blog I’ll admit I’m not that familiar with, it got me thinking about the title of a book from the great political humorist P.J. O’Rourke. Where he says, “don’t vote. It just encourages the bastards.” Which came out in 2009-10. What O’Rourke is implying there if not just flat-out saying is that when you vote for politicians, or their opponents, you’re endorsing them and what they do. When the fact is the problem is what American politicians do for us and in too many cases do for us. By making our lives more difficult by doing too much, or not what they’re constitutionally required to by law, which is to pass the budget that funds the government.

As a Democrat, I’m a big fan of democracy short of empowering the majority to rule over the minority. Big reason why I’m a Liberal Democrat and not a Social Democrat, which is more common in Europe. But the main problem with American politics is not our politicians and I mean our crooked and bought hyper-partisan politicians. The main problem with American politics are the voters who vote for those politicians. People say especially with the Left where I’m proud to be (Center-Left that is) that if we just have higher turnout we would get better politicians and people more representative of who they’re supposed to represent. The problem with that is again if you have more people voting, you’re going to have at least with the current state of the American voter, you’ll have more dumb people voting for people who they don’t know. Getting sucked in by an oil-slick politician or candidate. Who has no intention of doing what they campaigned on.

You can pass all the great campaign reform laws that you want, but if you still have the same dumb voters who are either too dumb to vote for the people who’ll best represent them and vote for the worst alternative possible instead, or don’t bother to research candidates and politicians they’re considering voting for and just go off of soundbites, or the person whose most up to date with pop culture references, or technology, or campaign commercials, or they think one candidate is not as bad as the other person, so for that very and only reason the lesser evil deserves their vote over the really evil person, we’re always going to have an American public complaining about how bad our political system and government is. Even though they are responsible for creating that very government and system themselves.

We don’t need more voters. We need better voters. We need people who actually take voting seriously and take it as seriously as they would when their buying a home, a car, deciding where to send their kid to college and everything else they value, their i-pad, or i-pod, what so-called reality TV show to watch, etc. And with a more educated public when it comes to voting, you’ll see better politicians and better government and with that you’ll not just to see more voters, but more educated voters. With politicians having fewer dopes they can rely on who’ll buy beach out in Cincinnati if you tell them that you have one there for sale simply because you told them that. And since they failed geography and social studies in high school, aren’t even aware that Cincinnati is nowhere near and ocean. And probably couldn’t even find it on a map if they were standing there.